Throughline - Throughline Presents: Short Wave

Episode Date: November 9, 2019

NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel shares the story of Nazi Germany's attempt to build a nuclear reactor — and how evidence of that effort was almost lost to history. It's a tale he heard from Timothy Koeth and Miriam Hiebert at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, I'm Randabd El-Fattah. I'm Ramtin Arablui. And today, we've got something special for you. A story about science and failure. And how some really interesting evidence of that failure was almost lost to history. It's a story that we heard on NPR's new daily science podcast, Shortwave. And here to help us set it up is the host of Shortwave, Maddy Safaya. Hey, Maddy.

Hey, you two. Thank you for having me on. I am a big fan. So before we get to it, spoiler free, what do we need to know? So this is a story from our colleague on the NPR Science Desk, Jeff Brumfield. And you'll hear him in a second. And it's kind of a story that doesn't always make it into the textbooks, partially, as you said, because it's about failure.

And in science, we're used to hearing things about like big discoveries, the successes, the breakthroughs, and the failures, not so much. Also, failing is sad. Yeah, that's that. It is sad. But in this story, the people that are failing are Nazis. So it's not that sad. So the thing that they were trying to get work was really important, something that if it hadn't failed, would have changed the course of history, essentially. And that's all you need to know to get started with this one. But if you like what you hear, you can also hear a lot more of it on Shortwave, because we're a daily show. So we're coming to you every weekday in about 10 minutes for each episode. So, you know, just a little science snack to start your day around. I'll take it. Delicious.

All right. Thanks, Maddie. And here's the story. Maddie Safaya here with NPR science correspondent Jeff Brumfield. What's up, Jeff? Hey there. I've got to say today's episode is a lot. So let's not waste time. Take us to the summer day in suburban Maryland where the story starts. Yeah. So right outside DC, there's this physicist named Timothy Koth. He works at the University of Maryland. And one day he's out for a jog when he gets this phone call from a friend of his, who's kind of a private person, wants to stay anonymous. Anyway, this friend says,

I need to meet you as soon as possible. The person said, okay, I knew where you are. Meet me in this parking lot. And about 20 minutes later, we got together. So they meet up. Tim's friend gets out of the car and has something to show him. Got out of the car, opened the trunk of the car, and in this little brown satchel, a lunch satchel wrapped in paper towels, was this cube.

A cube. A cube. A cube, that's right. I saw this corner of an edge with a little notch in it and this characteristic gray, and I immediately knew what it was. And I looked at my friend and I said, do you know what that is? And they responded to me and said, well, I think so. Do you know what it is?

Jeff, what the f*** is it? Well, let me just say that Tim is a history nerd for all things related to nuclear stuff. In fact, his office is packed with nuclear memorabilia. And he knew what he was looking at was very rare and, at least to him, potentially extremely valuable. But there was this one other clue about how it got in this trunk in this parking lot in suburban Maryland.

The other sort of clue was the piece of paper that was wrapped around it, sort of like a ransom note around a rock that would be thrown through somebody's window. And it says, Gift of Nininger. A piece of uranium from the reactor Hitler tried to build. So that was the confirmation that I needed. Uranium from the reactor that Hitler tried to build. That is correct. I have a lot of questions.

And I have a few answers. All right, today on the show, the incredible story of the Nazi efforts to build a nuclear reactor. It's a story that contains this really big idea about the way we practice science, but it's also a story that was almost lost to history. Almost. Okay, so Jeff, we are going to unspool the story of how this uranium cube came into the possession of a physicist in Maryland, who Nininger was, and what any of this has to do with how we practice science. But first, isn't like just a cube of uranium chilling in a trunk kind of dangerous? Well, this type of uranium was natural uranium. So it's a little radioactive, but it's not super radioactive. And we'll get to all that.

But let's just start with the story, which came to me from Timothy Koth, the guy you met earlier. The jogger. The jogging physicist. The jogging physicist who's a professor at the University of Maryland. In the Department of Material Science and Engineering. Tim and his research partner, Miriam Hebert. Do you go by Mimi or Miriam? I will answer to either. Mimi's good.

The two of them published this story you're about to hear in the magazine Physics Today, which is a thrilling publication. You better not throw too much shade on physics today. It is very well known among physicists. I'll have you know. Yes. And the story really starts in the winter between 1944 and 1945, right at the end of World War II. The tank columns span out towards Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Wörfurt. The Allies invade Germany and they're marching toward Berlin. In the southern sector, air attack proceeds in advance.

And in the middle of all this is this guy named Werner Heisenberg. Probably Germany's best physicist at the time. Have you heard of Heisenberg? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you may have heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Yeah, I know some of those words. Keep going. So during World War II for Germany, he became one of the leads of their nuclear effort.

And that nuclear effort was actually not about building a nuclear bomb because at Germany at this point, they did not believe they could build a bomb. What they were trying to do was instead go for nuclear power, nuclear reactors. They could use them maybe battleships or submarines, stuff like that. And we know this because the Americans would later find plans for a whole series of experimental reactors the Germans were working on. And the very last version of that was the B-8 reactor. The B-8 reactor was the one that used these cubes of uranium, 664 of them to be exact.

And these cubes were suspended using aircraft cables, like long sort of dangling strings. So describe what that looks like. So I'll let Mimi do it. It looks like a chandelier. It's sort of a cylindrical metal top with all of these chains of cubes hanging down around it. I think it's actually kind of pretty. And that whole apparatus would have been submerged into a cylindrical pool of heavy water.

So they're dipping this uranium chandelier in heavy water. How does that actually work? So remember, this uses natural uranium that they just straight up dug out of the ground. And basically, if you can get enough of this uranium together, and you can surround it with the right material, in this case, the Germans thought heavy water, which is a special kind of water that works for nuclear processes, you can ignite a sort of nuclear spark. It's almost like lighting a match. And the sort of nuclear chain reaction will start going, and you'll get heat and energy out of the reactor. So how close did they actually get it to working?

Yeah, well, I mean, Tim told me the Germans weren't all that far off. A safe answer is you needed about 50% more cubes. So if there were 664, you needed another 300. Was that evident from your analysis of this, or did people kind of know that already? So the Germans knew that. And you could infer that from their notes. So if the Germans would have gotten this thing working, that would have been a huge deal, right? I mean, the story we have of World War II is that the Americans launched the Manhattan

Project, their big project for the nuclear bomb. And they developed nuclear power and nuclear weapons and even used them right at the end of the war. If the Germans had gotten nuclear power working, they might have then become more interested in the bomb. The course of history could have changed. People who watch The Man in the High Castle on Amazon have some idea of what might have happened.

So, yeah. Yeah. So, they just needed like 300 more of these cubes and they didn't have them? Well. Turns out, there was another 400 cubes. In Germany? In Germany. Oh.

Oh, yeah. Tim and Mimi found evidence of this in a trove of archive documents at the University of Maryland. Original documents between the German High Command, the OSS, then the CIA, Atomic Energy Commission, and some field agents. What this means was Germany had enough uranium to make a working nuclear reactor at the end of World War II. So why didn't they just get their cubes together, Jeff? enough uranium to make a working nuclear reactor at the end of World War II. So why didn't they just get their cubes together, Jeff? Well, you know, this is a classic story of science. And as a scientist, I'm sure you're familiar with it. Heisenberg had his cubes, and he is over in one part of Germany working in his lab. And there were other teams of scientists working separately in separate labs,

and they just never got all their stuff together. I mean, that's basically what it comes down to. And, you know, this gets at the big sort of lesson for Mimi Hebert, because when you think about how the Germans tried to build up their nuclear program and get it running, it's almost exactly the opposite of what the U.S. do. Here we have that Manhattan project I mentioned. It was like this massive effort. This was the end result of $2 billion spent on research and production. 600,000 people. Years of feverish labor to harness atomic power ahead of the enemy.

Working all over the country, all pulling on the same rope. Which is very different than how most science works. It's usually done sort of independently, and independent verification is a big part of the same rope. Which is very different than how most science works. It's usually done sort of independently, and independent verification is a big part of the scientific process. But I don't personally believe that that's the best way to approach the grand challenges, like climate change, for example, with these sort of competing labs and competing for resources. I think consolidating everything you've got and all the brains that you've got is the best way to really get to an answer quickly.

So what happened to all these cubes? Right. So at the end of the war, some of the cubes were seized by the Americans. Those were the ones that were in that B8 reactor. And they were sent to the U.S. And that's where this note that the cube in Maryland, it was wrapped up in. Oh, yeah, it was like a gift of Nininger. Gift of Nininger, a piece of uranium from the reactor Hitler tried to build. So Tim starts digging,

and he turns up the name of this guy, Robert Nininger, who was in charge of inventory for part of the Manhattan Project. And it turns out Nininger may have been the person who oversaw the arrival of these cubes back from Germany in 1945. Now, it's not clear what happened next. Some of the cubes may have ended up fed into the U.S. sort of processing plants that eventually built more American nuclear weapons. But it seems like Ninninger held on to at least one of them. That's the one that ended up in the trunk of the car.

It was traced back to his estate. And there were a few others floating around that may have been kind of passed out as souvenirs. Souvenirs? There's a few that exist in the world. So the Smithsonian has one. Harvard has one. But none of them have had anything to do with the ninja specifically. So it's likely that he or someone else just sort of handed them out as paperweights because they're cool. What is happening?

What kind of secret Santa nonsense is going on? They're just passing out Nazi uranium. Which sounds nuts to us, but, you know, if it was back in the 1940s, it wouldn't have been quite as alarming. What are the options for the bulk of them? I mean, they genuinely would not shock me at all if they're sitting in a box somewhere and just no one's wanted to move this really heavy box in the past 70 years. That is probably the most likely outcome right now. That jives with what I know about scientific storage rooms.

That makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah. But Tim wants to find these cubes. And I'll tell you why. These things are a really important part of history. What you have to remember is that the Americans were absolutely terrified the Germans were going to get the bomb. And that was a big motivation that led them down the road to launch the Manhattan Project, to put billions of dollars, unimaginable amounts of money back in the 40s, and hundreds of thousands of people to just throw it all at this building

a nuclear bomb. And, you know, Tim really sees the cube, you know, the fear of this cube as what's driven us, propelled us into the nuclear age. This cube weighs five pounds, but it's one of the few remaining physical relics representing why the United States generated the Manhattan Project and everything that came out of that afterwards.

Nuclear weapons and nuclear power, the Cold War, the threat of this nuclear hostage that our planet was held in by, it's all motivated by this effort that produced just these 600 and some cubes. So I think from a historical point of view, it weighs a lot more than five pounds. Whoa. Whoa. Yeah. Oh, look, here it is. Cut to the chase.

The cube is right there, just sitting on your desk on your paperweight. My favorite part is always just handing that to people and seeing their reaction. They never expect it to be as heavy as it is because it's so small, but it's got some weight. Cool story, Jeff. Yeah, thank you. If you want to read the entire epic tale of these cubes, we have a link in the episode info to Tim Koth and Miriam Hebert's original paper in Physics Today. Thanks again to Maddie Sophia, the host of NPR's new daily science podcast called Shortwave. They have episodes every weekday with new discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines. All in about 10 minutes.

Not to mention, Ramteen, you wrote their theme music, which we're hearing right now. Guilty as charged. It sounds great. And hey, as always, if you like something you heard on the show, or if you have an idea for an episode, please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org or hit us up on Twitter at ThruLine NPR.